KJV: host. NIV: array (⁈ — Hebrew צואם [tsəvâʾām]). Twi: ɑsɑfo, which means something like a military company. To this day, ɑsɑfo are important political institutions among the Fante in the South.

2:2

Home, which has heretofore meant ‘to breathe’, also means ‘to rest’.

2:3

te ho

to clean

to purify

to make holy

to sanctify

Twi’s te ho is ‘to make holy’ in the NIV and ‘to sanctify’ in the KJV. The word more usually means ‘to clean oneself’. In Strong’s, the Hebrew קדש (qāḏēš) is defined first as ‘to be pure, clean’, and later as ‘to be holy, sacred’. The translators seem to have done a very good job at finding close literal translations — at least so far.

2:4

Hebrew term: תולדח (ṯôlədōh). According to Strong’s, this can mean ‘generations, families, races’ or it can mean ‘history’. The KJV says ‘These are the generations’. The NIV says ‘This is the account’. The Twi uses a strange phrase: ‘Yeinom ne… ɑwoɔ ntoɑtoɑsoɔ…’. Awoɔ means ‘birth’. Ntoɑtoɑsoɔ is a nominal form of the verbal phrase toɑ so, which means ‘to join together’ or ‘to continue’ — the derived term means, according to Christaller ‘continuation’. Judging from Anane and Kotey, I think it’s safe to consider that it means ‘generation’ in the more typical English sense.

2:5

dɔ

to hoe

to till

2:6

kusukuukuu

thick mist or fog

foro

to ascend

fɔ

to make wet

to moisten

Twi’s kusukuukuu is matched by the KJV’s ‘mist’ and the Hebrew אד (ʾēd). The NIV has ’streams’. At this point, it occurs to me to note that, while the Twi seems to be a more literal translation of the Hebrew than is the NIV, I do not speak Hebrew, and it may well be that a lot is missing in my understanding without a proper understanding of context.

2:7

dɔteɛ

soil

clay

mud

nwono

to form

to shape

hu

to blow

The Hebrew לנפש חיה (lənefeš ḥāyyah) is ɔkrɑ teɑsefoɔ. The NIV, here, again does not translate נפש as ’soul’, and gives us ‘living being’. The KJV says ‘living soul’. I like the Twi teɑsefoɔ because it can translate both as ‘living’ (in contexts like this) and ‘liver’. Err… as in ‘one who lives’. Not as in ‘organ liable to be damaged by heavy drinking’. It kind of humanises the concept nicely — makes it seem less abstract. That, of course, may do some damage to the sense of the original.

2:8

turo

garden

ɑpueeɛ

East

2:9

fifiri

to grow

2:10

The word nsutire is interesting. It literally corresponds to the NIV’s ‘headwaters’, which term is unfamiliar to me. The Hebrew term is ראשים (rāʾšîm), ראש meaning ‘head’, but often in a figurative sense, so it here means the source of a river or stream.

2:11

konton

to wind

to warp

2:12

ɑpopobibireboɔ

onyx

Bedolɑ does not appear in Christaller or Kotey. It apparently is a direct appropriation from Hebrew בדלח (ḇədōlah), which Strong’s defines:

…some precious article of merchandize, mentioned in Gen. 2:12, amongst gold and precious stones; The Arabian manna is compared to this (Nu. 11:7), which latter consists of white grains and scales, and is elsewhere compared to hoar frost (see Ex. 16:14; Nu. loc. cit.); however, according to Burckhardt (Travels in Syria (599), p. 954 Germ. trans.), the colour is yellowish. [It is utterly futile to suppose the manna of Scripture is anything now to be found; the manna was like בְּדֹלַח, which was round like coriander seed, and not like scales or grains.] Of the ancient interpreters, Aqu., Symm., Theod., Vulg., Josephus (Archaeol. iii. 1, § 6), understand βδέλλιον, bdellium, which is the gum of a tree growing in Arabia, India, and Babylonia. It is whitish, resinous and pellucid, nearly the colour of frankincense; when broken it appears the colour of wax, with grains like frankincense, but larger. Plin.N.H. xii. 9, s. 19. Its various names accord with this, μάδελκον, βδολχόν (which however rests upon conjecture, see Dios. i. 71 al. 80), βδέλλα, βδέλλιον: on the other hand bdellium is not such a precious natural production as to be mentioned between gold and precious stones, and that the land of Havilah should be celebrated for producing it. On this account the opinion of the Jews is not to be rejected, which has been learnedly supported by Bochard (Hieroz. ii. 674—683), that pearls are to be understood, of which a very large quantity are fished up in the Persian gulf and in India, and with these it would not be unsuitable to compare teh grains of manna. Bochart gives also the tymology, quadril. בְּדֹלַח from the root בָּדַל, as signifying an excellent, selected peral. Compare Arab. فَرِيدٌ a pearl, from the root فرد i.q. בָּדַל.

The NIV simply says ‘aromatic resin’ and the KJV opts for ‘bdellium’. The OED defines ‘bdellium’ as ‘a fragrant resin produced by a number of trees related to myrrh, used in perfumes.’

The Septuagint, interestingly, has ἄνϑραξ (ánthrax), meaning, perhaps, ‘garnet’.

Apopobibireboɔ is also an interesting term. Apopobibire means, according to Christaller:

1.the dark-green or dirty film on the ground where water has been spilled or on stagnant water, consisting of tiny water-plants, algae;… 2.dark-green moss on stones or trees… 3.a dark-green.

Ɔboɔ simply means ’stone’: onyx. Kind of cool name.

Akan - Kasahorow.keylayout (76 Kb)
Akan - Nyalasi.keylayout (76 Kb)

I’m also working on a bundle version that has the two layouts together, along with pretty icons. I have thus far been unsuccessful. If you think you can help, check out:

Akan.bundle.zip (108 Kb)

1:1

Throughout this chapter, the term Onyɑnkopɔn is used where the KJV and the NIV both say ‘God’. In Hebrew, the term אלהים (ʾĕlōhîm, cp. Arabic ﷲ ‘Allāh). In the Septuagint, the term is rendered θεὸς (theòs), and the Vulgate gives Deus. What is interesting about all of these terms is that they are generic terms for a god or the monotheist’s God. In everyday Twi, the term for god is Onyɑme. Onyɑnkopɔn is used most frequently in the phrase Awurɑde Nyɑnkopɔn, which I have often seen as a translation of the English ‘the Lord God’. I wonder why the translators opted for Onyɑnkopɔn over Onyɑme… My suspicion is that it has something to do with distinguishing from the get-go that the deity they’re talking about is not the god of traditional Akan religion. Onyɑnkopɔn can probably be broken into a root nyam (god) and two suffixes — -ko (one) and -pɔn (great). Pretty explicitly monotheistic. (The generally accepted view is that pre-missionary Asantes were monotheists, anyway. I have doubts about this viewpoint based on some very circumstantial evidence. I will write more about this at some later date, but I believe that Asɑse Yɑɑ, the female Earth deity, may have been considered Onyɑme’s equal.)

1:2

sɑkɑsɑkɑ

orderlessness — Kotey: sɑkɑsɑkɑyɛ = anarchy

hunu

empty

void

hollow

The KJV has it that ‘…the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.’ The NIV has it ‘hover’. The verb used in the Asante Twi Bible is ‘butuu’, while the Akuapem uses ‘butuw’. Christaller translates butuw: to overturn, turn upside down, upset. The entry references Jon. 3:4. The KJV:

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. (Emphasis mine.)

Kotey translates ‘butuw’ as ‘to capsize’. I think the term, here, is not ‘butu’ alone, but a compound verb: bu and tu. Anane translates ‘hover’ as ‘butubutu’ in Asante and butubutuw’ in Akuapem. I don’t know when to expect that the reduplicated and unreduplicated forms of the (compound?) verb would be used.

The term used for ’spirit’ is also interesting: honhom. As Kwame Gyekye notes in An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme, honhom is a nominal derivative of home: ‘to breathe’. The term most frequently means ‘breath’. Gyekye denies the identification of honhom with either ɔkrɑ (soul) or sunsum (spirit), despite the connection made by several of his informants. Interestingly, he ties this back to the Bible:

The identification of the honhom with the sunsum seems to me to be a recent idea, and may have resulted from the translation of the Bible into the various Akan dialects; honhom must have been used to translate the Greek pneuma (breath, spirit). p. 88

In fact, πνεῦμαis the term the Septuagint uses. All that said, I’m not entirely sure Gyekye is right… It seems to me probable that honhom and sunsum are etymologically related, in the fashion of πνεῦμα, Latin spiritus and spirāre, or Sanskrit प्राण (prāṇa).

1:6

Where the KJV has ‘firmament’ and the NIV has ‘expanse’, the Twi has ntrɛmu which essentially agrees with the NIV.

1:7

ɑhunu

air

atmosphere

It is interesting that the Twi version switches from ntrɛmu to ɑhunu, where the KJV maintains ‘firmament’, the NIV maintains ‘expanse’, and the original Hebrew sticks with רקיצ (râqîʿa) which, according to Strong’s Hebrew Bible Dictionary, supports either sense.

1:8

tiɑ X

to make up to X: ɔtiɑ mmiɛnsɑ — he is the third

1:9

pɛsɛɛ

altogether

quite

The Twi uses this term in the phrase ‘ɑsɑse pɛsɛɛ’, which corresponds to the KJV ‘dry land’ and the NIV ‘dry ground’. I wonder if this means that the Twi term wosee can’t sensibly be applied to land.

In my first reading of this passage, I thought that pɛsɛɛ meant ‘quite’ or ‘altogether’, which is the definition that Christaller gives. Pɛsɛɛ in this sense is an adverb, so the phrase ‘…nɑ wɔnhuhu ɑsɑse pɛsɛɛ’ might be translated ‘…and may the earth be seen fully’. But in the next sentence, we have ‘Nɑ Onyɑnkopɔn frɛɛ pɛsɛɛ no ɑsɑse…’: ‘And God called the pɛsɛɛ’ “earth”…’ Here, pɛsɛɛ is clearly being used as an adjective or noun. Wo and Wosee are very common terms for ‘dry’, and both occur in Christaller. The Akuapim has kesee. Pɛsɛɛ is probably etymologically related to cpɛ, meaning ‘drought’ or (following Christaller) ‘the Harmattan’.

1:11

fu

to cause to grow

to grow

frɔmfrɔm

frɔmm

fresh

green

so ɑbɑ

to bear fruit

esu

species

kind

sort

1:13

In the KJV, 1:8 ends with ‘And the evening and the morning were the second day.’ 1:13 is ‘And the evening and the morning were the third day.’ The corresponding passages in the NIV are ‘And there was evening, and there was morning — the second day.’ and ‘And there was evening, and there was morning — the third day.’ In both translations, the construction is parallel. I can’t read Hebrew beyond looking terms up in a dictionary, but the passages in the original also appear parallel. The Twi, however, is not. Second day: dɑ ɑ ɛtiɑ mmienu; third day: dɑ ɑ ɛtɔ so mmiɛnsɑ.

1:14

nkyekyɛmu

division

1:15

hrɑn

to shine

1:16

di so

to rule

1:17

Si means ‘to place’ or ‘to set’. I’m not sure why it’s reduplicated, here.

1:20

dɔre

dɔ

to increase in number

to multiply

mɑnyɑmɑnyɑ

disorderly

scattered

teeming

swarming

ɑbcde

creature

Christaller notes:

In other cases fa is used as an aux. v. referring to the action of the principal verb to a place, as taking its way through, or to a means employed… it serves then to express the Eng. prepositions through, by&c.

Thus, ‘nɑ ntɑkrɑboɑ ntu mfɑ ɑsɑse so ɔsoro ntrɛmu no ɑni’ where the KJV has ‘and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of the heaven’.

1:21

ntɑbɑn

wing

I really like the Twi version, here! Where the KJV has ‘every linging creature that moveth’ and the NIV has ‘every living and moving thing’, the Twi has ‘ɑbɔdeɛ ɑ ɛte ɑseɛ ɑ ɛkekɑ̃ ne ho’ — ‘living creature that moves its body’, literally, but kekɑ brings to mind ‘to wriggle’, for me. I wonder if it has similar connotations for the native Twi-speaker.

1:22

Interesting that hyirɑ, ‘to bless’, can carry a subordinate clause without the intercession of a speaking verb, as in the KJV and the NIV.

Wo, ‘to give birth’, for ‘to be fruitful’. Nice.

1:24

ɑtɔteboɑ

four-legged animal

weɑ

to creep

to crawl

mmoadoma

animals of all kinds — ɑboɑ + domɑ

1:25

afieboa

domestic animal — ofie + ɑboɑ

1:26

nsɛsoɔ

likeness

ɑpɑtɑɑ

fish (How did I not know this word?)

The KJV and NIV both have ‘in our image’. Twi uses subɑn. Christaller gives ‘figure, form, shape, fashion; stature; constitution, quality, nature; kind, pattern’. In modern Twi, subɑn almost always means ‘character’. Kotey gives ‘character, temperament, habit, kind’. I wonder if this is a misunderstanding on the part of the translators, or a change in the meaning of the term over time.

1:28

hyɛ so

to subdue

to suppress

to press upon

to oppress

to restrain

1:30

The KJV has ‘everything… wherein there is life’; the NIV has ‘everything that has the breath of life in it’. The term the Twi uses is ɔkrɑ, which usually translates to ’soul’. Gyekye supports this translation (p. 85). The Hebrew has נפש (nefeš, cp. Arabic نفس), which usually means ’soul’. (Much thanks for the help, Levi!) Twi: 1, English: 0.

And that’s the end of the beginning. Whew!

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